Friday, July 4, 2008

How much can you save with a Hybrid

How much can you save by using a hybrid car? Although it save you money from using less gas, its retail price and maintenance cost is more than non-hybrid. So how much you can save? When the gasoline price is shooting high crazy nowadays, the payback period should be sooner. If the oil price keeps rising in the coming few years, you would be glad that you have made the right decision of buying a hybrid car.

To figure out how much you can save, you can use this fuel calculator to get a rough idea of how much you can save by driving a hybrid car. With this calculator, you can compare the saving between a hybrid and a conventional car in terms of current gasoline price per mile. With this figure, you can estimate how many miles you need to drive your hybrid to breakeven its higher retail price than a conventional car.

Because government is advocating people to use hybrid car to reduce the greenhouse effect, to get a more accurate the saving of your hybrid you should take this into account as well. To check out the tax credits provided for each different model, you can refer to this reference page to figure out the tax credit you can receive for the model you would like to purchase. Among different models, 2005-08 Prius seems to be the one with the most tax credits. With these information you can now roughly estimate whether it is a good deal or not for you to buy a hybrid car.

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Hybrid Cars vs GreenHouse Effects

As greenhouse effects are getting more serious, environmental factor becomes a major factor to select the car we want. Hybrid car is one of options that can help us to minimize the greenhouse effects for driving a car. Combining an electric battery with the traditional internal combustion engines, less gas will be consumed because the electric battery will share the load from the combustion engine. Statistics has indicated that hybrid cars can save you from 20 to 30, or even up to 60 miles more per gallon than the traditional vehicle.

There are two kinds of hybrid cars, mild hybrids and full hybrids. The former is powered by utilizing both the gasoline engine and electric motor. This technology can let the vehicle to shut down the gasoline engine and drives the car on electric power only. Toyota, Lexus and Ford are using this kind of hybrid technology. Mild hybrids model use the electric motor primarily to boost the performance of the gasoline engine when it needs extra power. It simply shuts the engine off at idle, and starts it up again when you hit the accelerator.

Although hybrids offer better fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions than no-hybrids, their price is usually higher than conventional cars. Hybrids also cost more to maintain as well. In additions, the added weight of the electric batteries will reduce the overall engine efficiency. However, as the oil price shooting like a rocket, hybrid cars will definitely become an option for you to save significant amount of money spent on feeding your cars.

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